Paul Giamatti isn’t simply one of many big-name, Oscar-nominated stars of the following Star Trek collection, Starfleet Academy (the opposite is Holly Hunter). He’s additionally an enormous Star Trek nerd himself, and he proved it to me after I chatted with him on the CCXP con in São Paulo, Brazil, this week.
“Seven years outdated, seven, eight years outdated,” Giamatti instantly responds when requested when his fandom started. “I watched it with my father, who was a fan from the ’60s, watching within the ’60s. So yeah, I am going again, method again.”
Reduce to half a century later, and the actor is standing in entrance of hundreds of followers selling his personal Star Trek present on CCXP’s Thunder Stage – the Brazilian con’s model of SDCC’s Corridor H. To rapturous cheers, Giamatti unveiled a clip from the most recent collection (that is the twelfth Trek TV present, give or take).
New Starfleet Academy Clip Revealed
Within the new clip, the most recent starship to take to the heavens, the USS Athena, is underneath heavy assault from an unknown drive that appears to be engulfing the ship in a type of cosmic sheath. As Hunter’s Captain Nahla Ake offers orders from the bridge, we see the younger Academy college students working from side to side within the decks beneath. Additionally noticed is Robert Picardo’s The Physician, nonetheless swinging some 800 years after his time on the USS Voyager, as he makes an attempt to corral the scholars (“Don’t panic! Breathe! Respiration is your good friend!”) whereas acerbicly (after all) advising the captain to keep away from any additional direct hits to the ship. Instantly a ship emerges within the house past the Athena, seemingly placing itself collectively from completely different items, and who seems however Giamatti’s villainous Nus Braka, who tells Captain Ake she seems to be “as radiant as ever” earlier than including that “payback’s a bitch.” Finish of clip!
Paul Giamatti’s Star Trek Fandom
The actor doesn’t mince phrases in relation to what his favourite Trek collection is.
“My favourite one in all probability of all of them is Deep House 9,” he says. “I like The Authentic Sequence. I like Subsequent Era. I like Voyager really lots. I’ve loved Unusual New Worlds lots. These can be high favorites. However Deep House 9’s in all probability my most favourite one.”
So then happening the checklist of different required favorites each Star Trek fan will need to have…
“Sure, it will imply Sisko is my favourite captain,” he laughs. “And the Defiant is my favourite ship. I like that present. I weirdly love that present. The actors are so nice on that present. All of the actors on all of the reveals are nice, however I actually love that one. … I all the time admired Colm Meaney on Deep House 9 as a result of he just about… solely 97% of what he says is technobabble. And it is so good the way in which he does it. And you’ll observe it and he seems to be like he actually is aware of what he is speaking about!”
Favourite episode?
“Oh, wow. Nicely, there’s ‘The Customer’ one when Jake will get outdated – that’s a basic one,” he says. “A whole lot of the stuff with Odo I actually like. There’s the episode the place Jadzia nearly dies on that planet and Worf goes again to save lots of her. That was an important one. Tremendous shifting. However something with Odo in it I actually like. All that Changeling stuff is nice.”
See? He is aware of his stuff.
Enjoying Nus Braka, the Half-Klingon/Half-Tellarite Villain of Starfleet Academy
Giamatti was concerned within the growth of his character’s distinctive combo of Star Trek alien races. The Klingons, after all, want no introduction, however the different half of his character Nus Braka’s genetic make-up is Tellarite, which is definitely a species well-known to Trek followers that dates again to the William Shatner Authentic Sequence days.
“I had been simply taking pictures my mouth off about how a lot I wished to be a Klingon,” the actor laughs. “And so they have been like, ‘OK, we have now a Klingon [character already] and we have now lots of Klingony stuff. What if he is half? What if he is half?’ They have been like, ‘We thought we might convey the Tellarites again.’ And I believed, ‘Oh, yeah, the pig guys from The Authentic Sequence! That is two actually aggressive alien sorts. I’ll be actually aggressive!’ So it was partially my factor about being a Klingon, however then they introduced the Tellarite factor, which I believed was very humorous. So I let myself get fairly furry for the factor too!”
The actor has had some enjoyable making an attempt to think about what precisely led to the conception of this half-Klingon/half-pig-man creature.
“Are you able to think about these two races mating and creating this man? Oh, my God,” he beams. “However I do not know which one – I might by no means determine who’s the mom and who’s the daddy. I stored considering, is the mom a Tellarite, a feminine Tellarite? I used to be like, ‘I like that.’ I like the concept that some Klingon was drawn to this pig lady!”
None of which is to say that Nus Braka is a joke. There’s a component of caprice to the character to make sure, however he’ll disintegrate you simply as simply as he’ll crack a joke about you… or possibly he’ll do each.
“Nicely, that was the factor that they stated to me once they introduced it to me,” he remembers. “They stated the one factor that they wished to sort of throw to at me as an concept was that he was a comic. He thought he was humorous. And he was a really sort of showy, flashy comic, however beneath it he is harmful. And that mixture I believed was sort of attention-grabbing. As a result of that is a sort of creepy factor in a psychopath, is that if they’re type of humorous and sort of, ‘I am simply kidding. I am simply kidding.’ The whole lot’s only a joke and it is probably not. … [But] he would not care. He needs to destroy all the pieces.”
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Premiere Date
Starfleet Academy will debut worldwide with two episodes on Thursday, January 15, 2026, on Paramount+, and in Japan on Tuesday, January 23. New episodes of the 10-episode collection shall be launched weekly after that.
Discuss to Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura, or hearken to his Star Trek podcast, Transporter Room 3. Or do each!
